To read or not to read, to believe or not believe, those are the questions legal columnist HUGH SELBY raises in this personal piece about what’s a true story and what’s not.

Having lived beyond the Maker’s three score years and ten, I count myself lucky, one reason being the marvellous people that I met along the journey.

From many walks of life they were, and are, the antidote to the despair that comes from watching the successes of less deserving self-promoters.

One of the signs of who is “fair dinkum” and who is “look at me, me, me” are those life story books that come and go rather quickly on the bookseller shelves. I’d rather spend the purchase money for the self-promoting tale on a good laksa lunch for two in Dickson.

On the other hand, I’d be interested in a book about the Australian divers, Richard Harris and Craig Challen, who took part in the Tham Luang cave rescue of the Thai soccer boys and their coach. They were jointly awarded 2019 Australian of the Year.

Likewise, I’m interested in the journey of Melanoma research and treatment pioneers, Georgina Long and Richard Scolyer, jointly awarded 2024 Australian of the Year. Scolyer became, and is, a cancer patient who has turned his encounter with the disease into a learning opportunity.

What attracts me to these Australians of the Year is not just their passion for what they do, and their pursuit of excellence, but their personal courage. I am in awe. 

On the other hand, a tale that represents someone as much better than he or she really is can be called pseudo-hagiographic. The tale will be too flattering of its subject, likely to skirt around or avoid blemishes and mistakes, and – at worst – be too willing to dogmatically, and by skewing and mis-stating the facts, label careful critics and criticism as foolish and misguided. 

Worthy of “life stories” have been some remarkable Australians in policing, men and women who have served in Australia, and overseas, dedicated to keeping the peace, and solving crimes with integrity. Recall these names from the past: Ray Whitrod stands high, as do Victoria’s Mick Miller (from the 1980s), SA’s Mal Hyde, and Brian Bates, who went from the AFP to head NT Police.

And then there are those officers, who along with the paramedics and the firies, are first responders to road carnage, and to all manner of unexpected death. They are all unsung heroes. Like those in combat zones they need a rare toughness.

Russell Oxford was a detective who worked with others to solve murders (some of them appallingly gruesome), and who delighted in sharing the knowledge with others on training courses (which I was lucky enough to visit).

On his retirement in 2021, NSW Commissioner Mick Fuller called him “a true great”. Undoubtedly accurate, the commissioner might have added, “and a pain in the arse for command, which is why he never got beyond chief inspector.” 

Russell had the last laugh. They shifted him into obscurity where he took the call that led to infamous (now deceased) Roger Rogerson and Glen McNamara going to jail for the murder of Jamie Gao.

Oxford captures the essence of good detective work: “Remain very humble about what you do. Don’t be flashy because you’ve got tremendous responsibility to solve the most horrendous crimes. This is not about you, it is about the victims and their families, and your job is to help them. You have to work humbly and methodically, and as part of a team”.

Shifting from admiration, there’s a problem with “Behind the Badge”, published this year. It claims to be the “true story” of Nick Kaldas (one time NSW Deputy Police Commissioner, and more recently a lauded Commissioner for the Death and Veteran Suicide inquiry). 

Through his eyes it surely is. The problem is that I know his claims about Phuong Ngo as the 1994 murderer of NSW State politician John Newman are false. I know, too, that his claims about those he mentions who dared to try to expose those falsities are false. Which makes me question that book cover claim to be the true story. 

Based on information painstakingly gathered by others, who were and are convinced that Phuong Ngo was not the killer of John Newman MLA, I wrote a submission to the NSW Chief Justice requesting an inquiry into Mr Ngo’s conviction.  Thereafter I had no role.

Kaldas sets out how Judge Patten, who headed an inquiry into Ngo’s conviction (at a third trial where all his alleged accomplices were acquitted) wrote: “Unsupported allegations of gross impropriety were substituted for analysis of the facts. While Mr Selby’s submission to the Chief Justice, on its face, raised matters calling for investigation, they lost all significance… when scrutinised at an open hearing.”

Strong words. What Kaldas does not refer to in his book includes (among a number of points) the paragraphs in the Patten report that attribute to me material and opinions that I never thought about, let alone recorded. Nobody at the inquiry thought to contact me before publishing – a standard requirement when criticising someone in an official report (the more so when the person was not even called before the inquiry).

Nor does Kaldas refer to the scientific nonsense presented to the trials as showing that Mr Ngo was at a particular intersection at a time that would support Kaldas’ case. Other evidence to demolish that claim was easy to find – it was ignored by police, by lawyers and later by judicial officers.

This is not the place to detail how witnesses and their families were terrified into “corroborating” the police account, how one came to give an “induced statement” to the Crime Commission in return for immunity from prosecution, or how one was taken out of Australia and so was “unavailable”.

Of more than passing interest is how Kaldas and a person he interviewed both said at the second trial, on oath, that they had two interviews. Taken together those interviews provided grounds for no further interest in that witness.

Life, however, turns up the unexpected. By chance a third interview turned up at another, later trial. It occurred between the two interviews presented at the Ngo murder trial. 

No interest becomes “a lot of interest requiring further inquiry”. When the three interviews are read as a series it becomes bleeding obvious that the simple explanation of, “I made a mistake. I forgot about the second interview” shouldn’t wash. But it has washed, it is washing, and it will continue that way. 

“Will no one rid me of that turbulent/troublesome/meddlesome (pest)?” is the famous remark by Henry II that led to the 1170 murder of Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury. 

The form of words allows for “plausible deniability” namely, “it was not an order from me”, an apt description for the later acts of prosecution bastardry (all unsuccessful) meted out to those acquitted, and to Ngo’s most vocal and long-lasting supporter.

The book chapter is called “A Character is Assassinated”. What irony. True it is that it is the victors who write history, who get to say what is true and what is not.

But pick up what seems to be a shiny, fresh, appealing apple, take a bite and taste a rotten bit. You have to wonder about the rest. Is it spoilt in just the one place?

It’s time for an authentic laksa at Dickson where the simple, attractive truth is in the look, the taste and the smell.

Hugh Selby is a former barrister and the CityNews legal columnist.